Monday Post ~ June 6, 2011
“Everything is interesting.”
~Keri Smith
What are your plans for creative practice this week? Given the specifics of your schedule, decide on a realistic goal or a milestone to reach for. A goal as simple as “I will be creative for 10 minutes every day” is what it’s all about. Share your goal(s) as a comment to this post, and let us know how things went with your creative plans for last week, if you posted to last week’s Monday Post.
Suggestion: When you’re deciding on your creative intentions, it’s a good idea to think about WHEN you’re going to write those 2,000 words or paint that canvas. Try to schedule the time slots in your calendar (if you keep one), understanding that flexibility may be required. If things don’t happen when you wanted them to, that’s OK. Give yourself a gentle push with one hand, but pat yourself kindly on the shoulder with the other if you don’t reach your goal for a given week. Sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder. Ride whatever you’ve got.
It’s also useful to have a sense of your minimum requirements (come hell or high water I’m going to write 100 words) while keeping a lookout for sudden opportunities to do more. You know, the day that the baby takes a monster nap or your partner takes the kids out to run errands and you find yourself with an unexpected “extra” half hour. Grab that time for yourself. You can catch up on the dishes and the laundry later. If you keep something creative in the back of your mind for those sudden opportunities, you’ll be more likely to use them to your advantage — rather than squandering your precious bonus moments on Facebook or vacuuming out the sofa cushions.
Studio Mothers: Life & Art 
I didn’t post here last week, but I did finish my essay on the meaning of trees in my life and submitted it, an act of bravery in and of itself.
I’ve made some progress on the yoga pose project, but it came in the form of making cards. I received two unexpected and very meaningful gifts, and wanted to make handmade cards for thank you notes. The cards have abstracted yoga poses on the front and inside, collaged with marbled papers and papers from gelatin printing projects, all projects I did with my children and my niece. I may have “borrowed” some of their paper too. I’ve journaled more too, although not every night.
This week I want to move on with the project of photographing myself doing yoga, and turning those into stencils for collaging. I need some help with that. My girls are getting better with the camera, we could take some pictures outside. I like it that not only will they be my own, rather than from a magazine, but that the body, my body, is far from perfect, because yoga isn’t about having a perfect body.
Wonderful, Deborah! I can see from Facebook that you’re progressing beautifully with the photos — most inspiring 🙂
Hear, hear Deb!
Between being away for Memorial Day weekend and my husband being gone much of the week and weekend, there weren’t many spare moments for all my intentions. I did make a little pair of denim shorts for my son, wrote two blog entries, and finished planting seeds in the garden. I also spent a few hours going through cookbooks to find new recipes to inspire me out of our menu rut. I found some kid-friendly recipes that were great fun to prepare (with them) and were consumed with gusto, so it was successful on all accounts and worth the time spent.
This week’s intentions:
– cut out dress for daughter
– cut out capri pants for son
– finish client interview questionnaire
– 2 blog entries
– make rhubarb pie w/ my little Z-man
I think that’s more than enough!
Very nice, jlcm. The cookbook poring-over has been on my list for a while now, too. That must have been quite satisfying!
🙂
I had an amazing and restorative time in Costa Rica — truly blissful. Batteries fully charged.
This week’s goals:
* Work on Life Assessment responses WED/THURS/FRI
* Coaching infrastructure documents TUES
* Journaling DAILY
* Project Life update SAT/SUN
* Progress in Right-Brain Business Plan FRI/WEEKEND
i’m late in line this week. i finished another chapter this week, took me a couple of sessions, and blogging about it, but i finished in my day 2 session on wed.
trucking along. keeping open to gardening, cooking, and kid creativity when i’m not writing.